


Nobody Listening (But the Whole World's Watching)

by Huehxolotl



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen, Just a little character exploration, Pre-Stormblood, Yda Hext flashbacks that SE should have given us
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 19:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30026646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huehxolotl/pseuds/Huehxolotl
Summary: Fleeing to Gyr Abania to escape Ilberd and the Crystal Braves who betrayed them had seemed to be the right decision when she made it.But after stepping into her homeland for the first time in twenty years, Lyse begins to wonder if she has the strength to face the ghosts of her family that rest here.
Relationships: Lyse Hext & Yda Hext
Kudos: 5





	Nobody Listening (But the Whole World's Watching)

**Author's Note:**

> While this is being posted as a standalone, this is teeeechnically the first chapter of an SB rewrite where I do all the things with Lyse's character that SE should have. Like show people responding to the Hext name, flesh out the relationships she had with Yda, show her getting mad monk skillz (actually she just gets her ass kicked a lot but that's how monks roll no pain no gain), show her having actual friendships with the people she spent ALL of HW and three patches after with, actually give her a mother (she's dead but still at least she EXISTS unlike in canon bc SE hates women), and also show that she has actual trauma and grief responses.
> 
> I probably won't ever post the rest of it because it's seriously getting out of hand and I'm notoriously bad with long fics, but I do like adding random things to the Lyse tag, since she doesn't get enough love.
> 
> The formatting for this ended up being the lovechild of Ghosts (another Lyse fic) and Hearts of Fire (my TDP fic), which is. Hm. I hope it isn't confusing to read. I have no beta, so please forgive any mistakes.

Home.

For such a simple word, she has such complicated emotions about it. She has had a few “real” homes in her twenty-five years of life, though she has referred to three times as many places as such. “Home” more often than not simply means somewhere familiar and safe.

Home has been the Rising Stones.

Home has been the Waking Sands.

Home has been Gridania.

Home has been Sharlayan; old and new.

Home has been Gyr Abania.

(Home had been tucked into Yda’s side, sharing a blanket as they ate sweets, blocking out the world that never wanted them.)

But if someone were to ask her where her true, _proper_ home is, she would find herself drawing a blank.

Perhaps that’s not entirely true. While bearing Yda’s turban and Yda’s name, she will answer with absolute, unhesitating certainty that home is _Ala Mhigo_. Always has been, always will be.

However, even as she acts and speaks as Yda, it is _Lyse_ that lives behind the mask. The silent, oft forgotten part of her that clings to her name takes in the lands of the Fringes, of her motherland, and feels so utterly disconnected that she has to wonder if maybe she did, in fact, get a minor concussion from hitting her head on the tunnel roof earlier.

This is Gyr Abania, this is _home_ ; the home that her father died to protect and her sister died trying to rescue their countrymen from.

Yet she doesn’t feel anything more than vaguely irritated at the chill of the night winds, and an intense paranoia that Imperials are hiding behind every rock and tree. She can take any patrol stupid enough to ambush them, of course, but she is also tired and sore and sick with worry over the fate of her friends and rage that she has to choke down because _they had been betrayed_ and her friends are in danger or maybe hiding but she doesn’t _know_ and-

Papalymo trips over something (possibly a rock, but most likely his own feet) and she automatically stops and stretches her foot back to stop his fall. He curses, both because he tripped and because _seriously Yda_? _Don’t put your muddy shoes on my clothes twelve damn you_ _I’m dirty enough from all this_ traveling.

She ignores the disgust infused in his last word, and his complaining in general. Papalymo’s always complaining, anyway. Instead, she takes a moment to rub her thigh and wish that she could take her greaves off. When she had last had time to check her legs, they had been decorated with purple and black bruises from their fight in Ul’dah. The Braves hardly put up a fight individually, but there had been a _lot_ of them, and she had taken out no few patrols of Brass Blades as well. Part of her wishes that they had been able to make a stop in Gridania; she knows plenty of hidden tunnels that lead into the city, and Kan-E would not have denied them assistance.

“All that dirt will wash off when we go through the river, which should be close, right?” she idly reminds him, cutting off his rambling in an effort to ease the tensions between them and their escorts. The miqo’te (who had curtly introduced herself as M’naago) in particular seems to be displeased by the whole situation, and is scowling at Papalymo with a ferocity that rivals, well, Papalymo’s.

Meffrid sends her a strained smile when Papalymo quiets down and M’naago moves ahead. Meffrid is a name she recognized when he introduced himself, though she had never met him before he arrived to guide them across the wall. Part of her had been surprised that he knew of them -of _her_ \- already, as they went to great lengths to keep their involvement with the refugees discreet; until he had instead mentioned the banquet ordeal. She had been disappointed that rather than being recognized for her years assisting not only Gridania, but also the refugees it all too often turned away, she was known for _assisting in the assassination of_ _Nanamo_.

Which.

Rude.

And _definitely_ a lie, they had reassured the two soldiers.

Needless to say, their first meeting could have gone better, and days of tension filled travel did little to lighten the mood. It isn’t bad enough to make her regret turning to the refugees and Resistance for help; while she’s certainly had better traveling companions, she has also had far worse.

The moon is at its peak when they reach the forest line and find themselves on a cliff. Leaning against a tree to catch her breath, she takes her first real look at the lands of Gyr Abania. Moonlit mountains and plateaus scarred by ancient flood waters receding over time stretch out before her. There’s little signs of foliage -of life- beyond their cliff, but between plateaus, shining brightly under the moonlight, are the rushing waters of-

**(“Velodyna River. It used to be the official border between Gridania and Gyr Abania, but a stupid king started a stupid war, and, long story short, we lost the war but kept some of the land. Down here, it runs near…” Yda moves her hand southeast and taps on the squares that denote a town. “Rhalgr’s Reach.”**

**“Where mom trained,” she says in awe, leaning closer to the map of Eorzea they have spread out on the table.**

**Yda smiles in the same sad way she always does when they talk about home, and runs a hand through her hair. “Yeah. I was supposed to train there too, you know. Then the Mad King happened. We almost lost mom, and you. Her injuries had barely healed by the time you were born a month later.”**

**She shudders at the thought of never having been born and burrows into Yda’s side. Not for the first time, she wishes she had any memories of the woman whose personality Yda constantly complains that she inherited. “How did she escape?”**

**“Ah...” Yda trails off and hums in thought, tapping the table with her hand as she tries to remember. After a minute, she shakes her head. “I don’t know. She never really told me what happened, and I...could never bring myself to ask. I was too young to know _how_. And she was different, after. Angrier, grieving. I think...hm. I think the first time she smiled after the massacre was when you were born. I guess that means you were born to make people smile.”**

**Somehow, those words aren’t nearly as comforting as Yda probably meant them to be. Though she has no memories of her mom, the idea that such an amazing person endured so much pain makes her heart twist and ache. And what was all that suffering for? To sate a mad king's lust for power? It's so _unfair_.**

**“They were going to name you Lene,” Yda says suddenly. “They hadn’t really decided before you were born, but it was the one they talked about the most. Lyse though...I don’t know where that came from. Mom only ever said that it was a fitting name for a force to be reckoned with.”**

**“I like Lyse better than Lene!”**

**“You’re only saying that because it’s your name.”**

**“I am not! It just matches your name and mom’s name better.”**

**“...Hah. I guess it does.”)**

She stares past the Velodyna towards their destination, towards the place her mother once lived, and finally feels something other than anger or exhaustion.

Loss.

Sharp, painful, and so familiar -so utterly _Lyse_ \- that, for a moment, she forgets herself and her company.

 _‘I want to see it clearly,’_ she thinks, lifting her hand to rest on Yda’s turban. A few inches, that’s all she would need to lift it, to free her eyes. _‘This country, these lands. I need to…’_

In a better life, these lands might have been as familiar to her as the Twelveswood and Sharlayan shores are to her in this one. In a better life, she would have already spent years training in Rhalgr’s Reach, working towards mastery just as her mother had and Yda had been meant to. In a better life, it would be her father, mother, and sister at her side; would be monks, quarry workers, and castle guards that surrounded her.

But this isn’t a better life, and, standing here now, the loneliness she has buried in her heart threatens to overwhelm her because she’s _the last Hext_ and the worst one at that and why why _why_ did it have to be _her_ to survive and not any of _them_?

“Need a break, lass?” Meffrid asks, voice startling her out of her spiraling thoughts. He’s standing next to Papalymo some fulms away, next to a thin path that will take them down the cliff.

She drops her hand, noting the light stiffness in her fingers from how tightly she had gripped the broken edge of the mask while she wrestled with her emotions.

“As if! I’m not even close to my limit,” she chirps with a smile. Her words are hollow and her smile is reflexive, but grief, loss, and hopelessness are Lyse things, not Yda things, and she hasn’t been Lyse in six years. It’s easy -almost too easy- to stand straight, to laugh, to shove those emotions away and pretend they don’t exist these days. “But if you old guys need one, don’t be afraid to speak up!”

“Tch. You’re the one we’re waiting on, Yda!”

“...I’m not _that_ old, now.”

“What are you three doing up there?” M’naago questions from somewhere down the path, trying to make an effort to keep her voice down, but unable to keep the annoyance out of it. “ _Waiting_ for the Imperials? Let’s go already!”

“We’re going!” she assures all of them.

Meffrid is quick to shrug and continue on, but Papalymo makes a show of brushing dirt off his clothes until she catches up. He waits until they have taken a few steps before asking softly, “Are you alright?”

She hums and tilts her head and waves her hand as if she isn’t affected by him voicing the very question that she has been asking herself for the last six -fifteen, _twenty-_ years. “Of course! I was just taking in the view.”

“...Your sightseeing habits are going to get you into trouble someday,” he eventually says with a long sigh.

“Says the one who nearly waltzed into the path of _Ixali raiders_. And there’s nothing wrong with me taking time to appreciate the beauty of the lands that I would give my life to protect.”

Just as her father and sister had, even if her life isn’t worth nearly as much as theirs were.

Yda used to tell her stories of Rhalgr’s Reach, but her sister’s memories had grown hazy over the years, and often focused on the Reach itself. Her own memories are even less reliable, though she desperately attempts to recall every scrap of information that she can while they traverse the Fringes. Most of what she knows is from stories Yda told during their first few years as refugees; before Resistance and Circle missions pulled Yda away for longer and longer periods of time. Before the house was silent more often than not, and her sister’s presence faded from a steady presence to a rare gift.

The closer they get to their destination, the more anxiety churns in her stomach. While traveling, it’s easy to ignore that she is in her homeland; to ignore that she feels just as much a stranger here as she does in most other places. What will she do when she can finally stop and take it all in? How will she feel? How is she _supposed_ to feel?

She’s still debating those questions when their guides lead them to...rocks.

“Just a second. It’s a glamour.”

The idea that the Resistance has to hide and cower in their own damn home fills her heart with rage and disgust, though it has little time to build before she is distracted by the glamour disappearing.

Papalymo is suitably impressed, muttering under his breath about the amount of skill and power it would require to cast and hold a spell of that size. His vocabulary quickly turns incomprehensible to her; not that that’s unusual. At least here with Meffrid and M’naago, she has people to share confused shrugs with.

That small bit of comradery gives her the courage to walk through the ravine. She can hear sounds of the camp before she can see it: chocobos chirping, griffins whistling, crowds murmuring, shouts of those training, and the footsteps of soldiers. The first thing she notes is the broken pillars, one snapped and hanging across the stream next to the path like a sad arch.

Towering above them all, chiseled into the mountainside itself, is-

**(“The statue of Rhalgr is _huge_. Bigger than huge! See, below the temple is a large ravine big enough to house an entire village, and the statue is _taller_ than the ravine. It’s head looks out to the Fringes.”**

**Her face twists as she tries to imagine a statue _that_ tall, but the Sharlayan colony doesn’t have much in the way of large buildings, which leaves her with no frame of reference. Sharlayans prefer to dig down rather than build up. “But how did they make it? If it’s so tall?”**

**Yda shrugs. “It’s carved into the mountain, so probably with a lot of scaffolding, ladders, and magic. There’s paths you can take to stand on different parts of it. Mom said once that her master trainer liked to make her spar on the Destroyer’s hand itself, but that was before I was born.”**

**That piques her interest. Sparring? Somewhere super high? Those are two of her favorite things!**

**“That sounds like fun! I’m going to do that someday too!” she declares, curling her hands into fists and throwing punches into the air.**

**Yda laughs and steals the last brownie. “Mhm. I’ll make sure of it.”)**

As Meffrid and M’naago speak with the guards, her first thought is that Rhalgr’s Reach has seen better days. She feels a little ashamed of herself for it, as it’s not like rebuilding is a priority while the Empire slowly starves and kills their people, but, if nothing else, it shows how desperate the situation is. The “town” of Rhalgr’s Reach had, like the lower levels of the temple, been carved out of the rock. Most of the stone arches and pillars are broken, rubble decorating the land like fancy boulders. Thick Gyr Abanian styled canvases are hung in one particular corner of the camp, and pavilions of similar material dot the rest of it.

But, in the middle of all the wreckage, the bridges that cross a small lake and what she knows is an altar to the Destroyer are whole.

There are soldiers where there should be monks, battle chocobos where there should be pack chocobos, war supplies where there should be a market, and tents where there should be open walkways, but it’s _Rhalgr’s Reach_.

Her mother, father, and sister once tread these paths, maybe even once stood in this exact spot, and for the first time since she crossed Baelsar’s bloody Wall, she feels the ghost of a connection to the land that she was driven from. Overcome with nostalgia, she reaches into the small pouch -which puts the nearby guards on alert- she had attached onto her belt and pulls out a blue crystal. It had been Yda’s once, and her mother’s before that. It’s the only remnant of their mother that they had left. Leaving Gyr Abania had been a rushed affair, one that allowed them time enough to pack only what they needed; not that they had much in the way of belongings to begin with. She doesn’t usually carry it around, but after everything with Moen, she had wanted something familiar to keep with her.

Something other than Yda’s mask, at any rate.

The crystal glows under the sunlight when she holds it up to the Destroyer. ‘ _I’m here_ ,’ she thinks to the ghosts of her family. _‘It’s not how any of us wanted it to be, but_ I’m here _.’_

“Right, the commander is still working, so we can report in first thing.”

Commander Conrad Kemp is someone that Meffrid and M’naago have spoken so highly of that, when they reach the large tent at the back of the ravine, she is surprised to discover that the commander in question is an older man about the same height she is. Her first impression is that he looks _tired_. Not in a "worked through the night and need six cups of tea before I can even _think_ of having a coherent conversation" way, but in a “I’ve seen so much loss and death that sometimes I wonder how I force myself to go on living” kind of way.

It’s an expression she has seen on the faces of refugees, victims of the last Calamity, and veteran soldiers. It’s the expression she saw in Yda’s face, late at night when her sister thought she was sleeping. 

It’s the expression she sees in the mirror, when certain anniversaries come ‘round.

The relief at seeing Meffrid and M’naago alive and well takes a decade off Kemp’s face, however. Already, she can tell that everything she has heard of him is true, if not an understatement, and it makes her feel _worse_ about the soldiers lost in the first attempt to cross the wall and retrieve them. Had she known what her request would cost the Resistance, she would have never made it in the first place. She would have figured something out, even if it meant roughing it out in the desert.

Her life isn’t worth the lives of three soldiers.

(Isn’t worth anything at all.)

She doesn’t say that when she greets the Commander of Rhalgr’s Reach, but she _does_ let him know that they will help however they can, whenever they’re needed. Papalymo sighs, but, in this, he backs her up without a fuss. It isn’t enough to make up for the lives that were lost getting them there, but she’s been trying to make up for lost lives since she was five years old. What’s three more added to the list?

“We could certainly use the help, but we can speak more on the matter _after_ the healers have a look at you.” Kemp smiles wryly and shakes his head. “And not a moment sooner, I’m afraid.”

Her years working in Gridania have left her more than familiar enough with healers to understand what Kemp is implying -that healers are the scariest people ever- but those same experiences result in an automatic reply of, “They can’t stop what they can’t catch!”

Among the Wood Wailers, who escape from healers as a hobby, that would have gotten her laughs and fist bumps in response; the four present, disappointingly, are only alarmed (the soldiers) and exasperated (Papalymo).

“We’ll let _Orella_ deal with you,” Meffrid mutters, now side-eyeing her suspiciously. Then, clearing his throat, he assures Kemp that they’ll be ready in the morning for a rundown of what they have missed, and that he’ll take them _all_ to the Barber’s in the meantime. M’naago glowers at being included, but doesn’t verbally argue when he gestures for them to follow his lead.

If she lingers behind the group to stare longingly at the darkened tunnel beyond the commander’s tent, at what must be the entryway into the temple passages, then the only person who might notice is Commander Kemp.

 **-Meffrid** -

Never does a cot feel like heaven except after a long trip.

He hadn’t needed to remain under the healer’s care. Truthfully, he had only gone so that he could show the Scions the way. They are his responsibility, though now that they have arrived, he doesn’t think that they are any longer. Whatever Conrad’s plans concerning the Scions are, Orella has deemed the two in serious need of rest; it will be several days before they will be of use to the Resistance.

He sighs and allows the sounds of his roommate’s restless sleep to calm him. It works, but only to a point. The thoughts he buried during the trip across the border and back are pushing themselves forward, demanding his attention and ruining his attempts to sleep.

Most of them center on Yda Hext.

A banner is where her potential lies, he had told M’naago. Something to inspire people. That’s the only thing that could make a cautious man like Conrad Kemp gamble his soldier’s lives so recklessly. The Resistance is running out of fire, and the people of Gyr Abania are so beaten and broken that few have the will or strength to continue fighting. The soldiers are falling into a rut, relying on old anger and old pain to fuel this hopeless war. There isn’t enough new blood -isn’t enough _hope_ \- to combat the bitterness that the veterans spread.

That bitterness is what the Griffin is using to draw people in. He speaks to their pain, gives voice to their frustration, and in return they give him their loyalty. It would be impressive, if it weren’t so bloody suspicious.

Yda Hext’s request for help must have been, to Conrad, a sign from the gods. Curtis Hext is a name that lives in the heart of every Resistance member old and new. The man who dared spit in the Mad King’s eye. The man whose words inspired people to stand against Theodric, inspired the castle guards to let the rioters into the castle. By default, Hext is a name that will draw people in and give them hope.

But his impressions of _Yda_ Hext are mixed.

Impulsive, yet thoughtful.

Overconfident, yet cautious.

Young, yet experienced.

It’s the last one that gets him, and he won’t deny it. For all that he has heard of the Scions, all that this woman has apparently done, he can’t help but focus on her age. While he doesn’t know the exact number, he gets the impression that Yda Hext is about M’naago’s age, and that’s just _too damned young_ to be shouldering the hopes of a battered Resistance like Conrad wants her to. He has always heard that the youth are the future, but shouldn’t the veterans be trying to _spare_ them from pain, instead of foisting on them the burden of winning this bloody war?

Maybe that’s just the father in him speaking. Not that he has any right to call himself a father in any way that matters.

He sighs again, and falls asleep wondering what will come of Yda Hext’s time in Rhalgr’s Reach.


End file.
